OS X install problems on Beige G3

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Good evening,
I have recently acquired a beige g3 that has the following specs:
266Mhz processor
192 MB ram
4.2GB 68pin scsi HD

I can boot up off the os x install cd and have already erased it with the disk utility to hfs+ format. My problem is it seems to hang on the step "Preparing disk". I'm pretty sure that it is the original HD and my 9.2.2 install worked ok. Any suggestions?

I have removed all but the 68pin scsi pci cards as this is the one that the HD is connected to.

Another thing I shall note is if I open the log file, the step it is hanging on is "Writing extra partition info to partition 8."

Any help is appreciated :)
 
In order to get X on my beige G3, I had to pull all non original cards out of the machine. Only the cpu upgrade stayed in. If I left the usb, ati video card, or the firewire card in the machine would hang up in the middle of installation. After the software was installed, I reinstalled the cards and everything has been golden for two years of use. Good Luck.

Very Respectfully,
Jim Miller
 
I have already pulled all the cards but the scsi card but kinda need that because the hard drive is scsi 2 and the board is scsi 1. I am also pretty sure that this was an original card.
... Hmm think a granite 68 -50 pin adapter woudl work? on the built in scsi bus?
 
I would give it a shot. I experienced a weekend of hell trying to originally get X on my machine. An electrical engineer at work suggested pulling all the cards as he had seen this in the windows world where he worked. The detail he went into was way over my head, but I know that when I pulled all of the cards I had success. Up to this point, the software would get very close to being installed, then the error messages would pop up. As I recall, the whole process also seemed much faster after the cards were pulled.
 
I tried removing even the apple scsi 2 card that the HD was attached to and used the on board scsi 1 controller with the granite adapter with no dice.
I even detached everything but the cd rom and hd and still had no luck.

Next things I am going to try is updating the firmware but I dont think this will help too much. Any more suggestion? I was also wondering if your HD is scsi 1 or 2 and if it is attached to a card or not.

Thanks
 
Unfortunately,

My hard drive was ata as I thought all beige G 3 were? I guess that I am out of my ball park here, good luck.

Very Respectfully,
Jim Miller
 
Yea, actually I just tried xPostFacto and the clone utility. The clone utility gets me to boot off osx on the HD however at the apple the screen becomes static-ish and freezes.
As for xPostFacto, It boots off the hard drive and even gets to the installer however after a few clicks on the continue button, the screen goes black stating the installer quit and that I need to restart. x.x

Perhaps I will try reading the steps on making a bootable cd-rom except use the hard drive...
 
All beige G3's (and, I think, all towers from then on) came factory-standard with an ATA internal IDE hard drive. If you can get the original ATA hard drive, you probably have to plug it back in and install X on here. If not, I don't know what to tell you except pray that Panther will fix this issue.
 
arden,

This is not true, I had a beige G3 that had scsi. In fact there was an entire "server" line that came with ultra-wide scsi drives installed.

Also, I had a considerable amount of problems getting osx to install on my beige g3, and I hate to say it, but apple probably should have never supported that machine with the release of the original osx. Unfortunately I think Apple's reasoning for supporting that machine was due in part because they didn't want to release an operating system that wasn't supported on "all current" machines.

My story has a happy ending though, I did eventually get osx installed on my beige g3. I had to pull everything, and I mean everything.

I kept memory and a hard drive. I also didn't even leave all the memory. I used a memory tester, (that I am unable to find the exact one, but try this one it might work.)

I also had to resort to pulling the monitor adaptor. I had an old Apple monitor lying around. It ended up being one of the things preventing the install.

Also, I wouldn't expect Panther to "fix this issue" because it's not so much of an osx issue as it is an osx incompatibility and I doubt newer versions will be any more compatible with older systems, it usually goes the other way. I would expect Panther to be even more restrictive to older macs. Which, believe it or not, is a good thing.
 
Hmm, I'll try that memory idea. Currently I have 192 so if I bring it down to 128 with one stick... who knows :)

evildan: that is quite a memory tester you have there :p
I'm sure it will help MY memory but remember we gotta focus on the beige! :D
 
I finally found an ata 6gb drive and installed OS X on it. The install went without a problem so it must be that OS X cannot be installed on a scsi hard drive. Or at least not for me... :p
 
I'm sure it's not the hard drive, but the adapter that was causing problems. Is it an Adaptec SCSI adapter? OS X has some problems with Adaptec SCSI adapters -- and I think there are some firmware updates for those cards, but I can't be sure.

Strange how we've been touting Macintosh computers as being compatible with everything, yet you need to pull out a lot of cards to get it to install... does it run OK when you re-insert the cards after the install?
 
(ElDiabloConCaca, I mentioned the scsi card I used in previous posts and also what I did with it. );)

When I was doing the install, I had every card I had in the machine now (OrangePC, second ethernet card, APPLE SCSI 2 card with the required updated firmware). I also had a laser printer attached and had my (what I shall deem) "scsi tower" attached and on.


For both scsi1 and scsi 2 drives, the installer would hang on "preparing disk" regardless of drive manufacturer. For the ata drive, it installed with no problem whatsoever.

Sooner or later I'll post a picture here...
 
Wow, I know this post is coming back from the dead but I think people may find this useful. The reason scsi did not work was because the drivers supply for the card were really old. After doing some research I found out that the card is made by atto and that they are fairly consistent with coming out with updates for their cards. After installing the firmware I tested my theory and was sucessful in installing os x.
Hope this helps someone... I have since then moved on to an 80gb ata hd however I still think it is a good idea to upgrade the firmware of the card because first off, it allows you to use the external scsi interface on the card and second, it helps prevent conflicts with other components... such as a g4 processor upgrade.
Cheers
 
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